Until the Zionist project of creating an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine began in earnest in the latter part of the 19th century, Jews lived in many parts of the Muslim world and enjoyed living conditions not available to their fellow European Jews until recently.

For many centuries, and apart from the first two or three decades of Islamic history when Muslim-Jewish relations were plagued with a series of crises, Jews constituted a natural component of Muslim societies.

The Islamic civilisation was built with Muslim, Christian, Sabian and Jewish hands, by scientists and philosophers from all faiths and religious denominations who found in Baghdad, Cordova, Sicily and so many other cities unprecedented opportunities to think freely, translate literary, scientific and philosophical works of earlier civilizations and produce a corpus of knowledge that became the foundation upon which Europe set up its own enlightenment project.

In fact, Jews - on many occasions - fled European lands where they had been persecuted and sought refuge in Muslim lands.

The centuries-long harmonious coexistence between the Muslims and the Jews could have gone on. However, it was shattered, regrettably, when the Western European powers decided to solve their own Jewish problem by banishing the Jews to Palestine. Western Europe feared an influx of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, and the idea of sending the Jews to Palestine seemed to some Christian-Zionist leaders in London to pave the way for the second coming of Christ.

It is a historical fact that most Jews had at the time been opposed to the idea of migrating to the "promised land". Nothing would have persuaded European Jews to leave their homes; for many of them the countries where they lived were their homelands. Without the Holocaust, which only a fool or an ignorant would deny, Israel, the dream of Zionism, would never have been created.

Many Holocaust survivors looked for shelter in other European countries but doors were shut in their faces. Whether out of conviction or out of desperation, these Jews ended up occupying the homeland of another people, the Palestinians, becoming their oppressors and the object of their resistance.

Since then, history has been rewritten and its facts distorted; Jewish youngsters have been brainwashed to believe that Israel is the oxygen without which they will suffocate and that it is their God-given right and God-ordained duty to claim the land allegedly promised to them. It is no wonder that Jewish young men and women from the UK and other European countries have been going to Palestine to serve in the Israeli army whose primary mission is to suppress and oppress the Palestinians.

The Independent Jewish Voices project is excellent news. It will hopefully pave the way for enlightening Jews about the truth of what happened to them and about the dire consequences of what some of them are doing to their Palestinian victims.

This project is a significant leap in the direction of restoring historic Muslim-Jewish relations. But its most important contribution will be to refute the myth that Jews and the state of Israel are one and the same. In fact, nothing poses more danger to the Jewish people than tying their fate to a colonial project whose future is increasingly in doubt.

To assume that the Jews cannot survive without a state of their own called Israel is extremely foolish. The Jews have been around for thousands of years without a state of their own. There are many nations who similarly see themselves as distinct, whether as a faith community or a race or an ethnicity, but have been in existence, and will continue to be so, without a state of their own.

Jews have a future and a place in the Muslim world; but the future of an exclusively Jewish state in the heart of the Muslim world is in doubt. What is more certain is a reality in which Muslims, Christians and Jews can live together again in peace and harmony enjoying equal citizenship rights; none should be superior to another.

In a post-Israel era Jews will still be living in Palestine and other regions of the Muslim world just as many Jews lived with Muslims before they were intimidated by Zionism to leave their ancient dwellings in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and many other places to provide this Zionist apartheid entity with a badly-needed population. Read The Jews of Iraq by Naim Giladi, a first-hand account of violence and intimidation of Iraqi Jews to leave their homeland.

Jews can once again put their hands in the hands of the Arabs and the Muslims to build a better future for all provided they dissociate themselves from the injustices inflicted upon the Palestinians by Zionism.

The IJV project gives us hope; it promises that one day, perhaps not so distant, Muslims and Jews can join forces in the service of genuine peace, a peace based on justice.

The conflict in the Middle East has impacted rather negatively, so far, on relations between Muslims and Jews. Here in the UK, relations have been rather sour. Although in many instances Muslims and Jews see eye to eye on social issues, Middle Eastern politics has driven a wedge between them.

The enormous influence yielded by Israel and its lobby on sections of British Jewry has made it rather difficult for Muslims and Jews to work together. Of particular concern has been the state of affairs on campus where a hidden war is raging between Muslim and Jewish students with each side endeavouring to preclude the activities of the other. In fact, the Middle East aside, there is a huge common ground they could share to serve good causes locally, nationally and internationally.

Many Jews in this country and around the world are embarrassed by what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. Many of them are opposed to Zionism but very few of them have been able to express their opinions in the way the IJV have done. This group of respectable and well-placed Jewish figures in British society has embarked on a project that will set the record straight.

Click here for a full list of articles in the Independent Jewish Voices debate.